Bibliotheca Sacra
153 (July-September 1996) 281-307.
Copyright © 1996 by
MIRACLES AND JESUS'
PROCLAMATION OF THE
Mark R. Saucy
The significance of miracles in the
ministry of Jesus
of
value of miracles in affirming the faith of the
faithful. He de-
scribed Jesus as "a man attested to you by
God with miracles and
wonders and signs" (Acts 2:22; cf. 10:38).
Later the Gospel writers
referred to the significance of His miracles to
both believers and
unbelievers.1 In modern times a
number of interpreters agree
that Jesus worked wonders,2 but they
remain divided on the sig-
Mark
R. Saucy is Professor of Systematic Theology, Kiev Theological Seminary,
1 The prominence of
miracle stories in the Gospels is the best evidence for the
significance of miracles to the
authors. The Gospels record thirty-four miracles by
Jesus.
Fifteen texts of Jesus' ministry (e.g., Mark 1:32-34) refer to His miraculous
deeds. Concerning just healings, Morton Kelsey
contends almost one-fifth of the
Gospels
records Jesus' healings or discussions raised by them. He notes there is
more Gospel data on physical transformation than on
moral or spiritual trans-
formation (Healing
and Christianity [New York: Harper & Row, 1973], 53-54).
2
Matthew
12:28 is the bedrock of critical scholarship's conclusions as to Jesus'
miracle-working capabilities. Even
Joachim Jeremias, who dismisses much of the
Gospel
miracles because of the "great powers of imagination of ancient man,"
con-
cludes that the authenticity
of Matthew 12:28 calls for some sort of extraordinary
deeds by Jesus to make the charge of magic meaningful
(New Testament Theology,
trans. John Bowden [
authenticity of the miracle stories
in general, A. E. Harvey (Jesus and the
Con-
straints of History [
sion by R. Latourelle, "Authenticite historique des miracles de Jesus," Gregori-
anum 54
(1973): 225-62.
External evidence for Jesus'
miracles includes Josephus' description of Jesus
as a Worker of paradoxical deeds (The Antiquities of the Jews 18.63 ff.),
later rab-
binic censure of Jesus as a
"sorcerer who misled the people" (b.
Sanh. 43a, cited by
Harvey,
Jesus and the Constraints of History,
98, and Pierre Grelot, "Les miracles
de Jesus et la demonologie
Juive," Les
Miracles de Jesus, ed. Xavier Leon-Dufour
[
their own exorcists (t. Hul. 2:22-23; y. Sabb. 14:4:14d; y.
Abod. Zar. 2:2:40d—41a; b.
282 BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / July–September 1996
nificance of the miracles for
what Jesus was seeking to do.3
In contrast to scholars who are
critically selective of the
Gospel
data, this writer contends that the miracles of Jesus are revelatory
deeds of the eschatological kingdom He preached and
that in
the Gospels they provoked people to make decisions
regarding Him.
The Gospel writers knew little of
modern notions of the "laws
of nature" so that taking miracles as the
abrogation or accelera-
tion of such laws was not
meaningful or necessary for them.4
From
their perspective the miraculous deeds of Jesus and His dis-
ciples are defined more by
their effect on those who witnessed
them. The miracles were the extraordinary actions
that evoked
astonishment and awe in the people
of first-century
(Acts
2:22).5 The Synoptic Gospels naturally designate them
therefore as evidences of duna<mij. They were "mighty
acts" and
"manifestations of power."6
Abod. Zar. 27b, cited by Graham Twelftree, "
in Gospel
Perspectives, vol. 6: The Miracles of
Jesus, ed. David Wenham and
Craig
Blomberg [
tion formulae in the Papyri Graecae Magicae. See B. L. Blackburn, "Miracles and
Miracle
Stories," in Dictionary of Jesus and
the Gospels, ed. Joel, B. Green, Scot
McKnight, and
3 A sampling of recent
offerings includes
History, 98-120, for whom the
miracles of Jesus are manifestations of an eschato-
logical figure of the end-time; Morton Smith,
for whom miracles confirm Jesus as a
first-century magician who learned
His trade in
Francisco:
Harper and Row, 1978]; cf. John M. Hull, Hellenistic
Magic and the
Synoptic Tradition [
as a Galilean charismatic in the rabbinic
traditions of Honi, the circle-drawer
(Jesus the Jew: A Historian's Reading of the
Gospels [London: Collins, 1973); John
Dominic
Crossan, who interprets Jesus' miracles as events
intended to evoke the
first-century peasant table-fellowship,
which would ultimately be the basis of a
peasant social movement (The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jew-
ish Peasant [
who sees the miracles as actions of liberation
against oppressive social, economic,
religious, and political structures of the first
century (Jesus and the Spiral of Vi-
olence [
4 Therefore readers of
the Gospels today need not contrive unnatural and unbib-
lical categories of miracle
stories such as miracles of healing, or exorcism, or na-
ture. In the view of the
Gospel writers, each of these deeds had the same effect of
evoking wonder in the witnesses, and each of
them was the necessary result of Je-
sus' unified mission
against the
questions and others about miracles see Colin
Brown, Miracles and the Critical
Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984). For his perspective on the definition of
miracles see especially 290-92.
5 G. H. Boobyer, "The Gospel Miracles: Views Past and
Present," in The Miracles
and the Resurrection (London: SPCK, 1964), 32; Anton Vogtle, "The Miracles of Je-
sus against Their
Contemporary Background," in Jesus
in His Time, ed. Hans Jur-
gen Schultz, trans. Brian Watchorn (London: SPCK, 1971), 96-97.
6
Birger Gerhardsson,
in The Mighty Acts of Jesus according to
Matthew, trans.
Robert
Dewsnap (Lund: Gleerup,
1979), 18.
Miracles
and Jesus' Proclamation of the
WORD AND DEED IN JESUS' PRESENTATION
OF THE
KINGDOM
The early church did not think of
Jesus' miracles as mere
tangents or appendages to His ministry. Peter,
for example, told
his audience in Acts 10:36 and 38 that they knew
"the word which
He
sent to the sons of
.
. . [and] how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit
and with
power, and how He went about doing good, and healing
all who
were oppressed by the devil." The preaching of
peace was inher-
ently accompanied with
anointing for miracle-working power.
In the Gospels the relationship
between word and deed is also
clear. Matthew's summary statements in 4:23 and 9:35
point up
Jesus'
messianic activity in word and deed.7 Matthew and Luke
referred to Jesus' ministry as both fulfilling
the prophetic
proclamations of Isaiah concerning
the preaching of liberation
and demonstrating liberation through miracles.8
Mark's first
account of Jesus' ministry (1:21—27)9
shows the inherent interre-
7 Jesus went
"teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the gospel of the
kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and
every kind of sickness" (Matt. 4:23;
9:35).
As H. Held observed nearly a generation ago, the strategic position of the
Sermon
on the Mount (Matt. 5-7) juxtaposed to the miracles in chapters 8 and 9 re-
veals Matthew's intention to
show Jesus' mission as involving both word and deed
("Matthew
as Interpreter of the Miracle Stories," Tradition and Interpretation in
Matthew [
Mighty Acts of Jesus
according to Matthew,
23.
8 In Matthew 11:4-5,
Jesus' response to the inquiry of John's disciples that they
should go and report what they had heard and seen
makes clear the fulfillment of
Isaiah 35:5 in what they had seen of His
miracles.
What they had heard concerns
the fulfillment of Isaiah 61:1-2--the gospel being
preached to the poor (W. Grimm,
Weil Ich
Dich Liebe. Die Verkundigung Jesu and Deuterojesaja [
Isaiah 61:1-2 holds paradigmatic
significance for Jesus' understanding of His
ministry, as recorded in Luke. Jesus was in the
synagogue reading and announcing
His own fulfillment of Isaiah 61:1-2 (Luke
4:16-30).
For Luke this announcement
had reference to not only Jesus' proclamation of
liberation and release, but also the
previous demonstration of it by miraculous
healings. When He spoke in the syna-
gogue that Sabbath, He
already had the reputation of being a miracle-worker. "No
doubt you will quote this proverb to Me, ‘Physician
heal yourself! Whatever we
heard
was done at
the significance of Isaiah 61 for Luke, see Joseph
A. Fitzmyer, The
Gospel
according to Luke I-IX, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981), 529;
and
George
E. Rice, "Luke 4:31-44: Release for the Captives,"
Seminary Studies 20 (Spring,
1982): 28.
9 The reaction of the
audience to both Jesus' exorcism and His teaching in Mark
1:21-27
shows the close tie between His words and His deeds. In 1:22 the crowds
were "amazed" (e]ceplh<ssonto) at His teaching and in
1:27 they were also "amazed"
(e]qambh<qhsan) at His exorcism. While
qauma<zw
is typically the term the Synoptics
used to describe the impression people got of Jesus'
healing activity, Mundle notes
that the closely related e]kplh<ssqai in 1:22 renders
"impossible any clear division
between his acts and teaching"
("Miracle," in The New
International Dictionary of
New Testament Theology, 2:623-24).
284
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / July–September
1996
lationship of word and miracle and
states that both miracles and
parables expose spiritual blindness.10
So close is the connection
between word and miracle in the Gospels, that
many scholars do
not hesitate to speak of miracles in
"parabolic" terms. Richard-
son thinks of miracles as enacted or concrete
parables, living ex-
amples of the content of
Jesus' preaching.11 Blomberg also speaks
of the so-called nature miracles as depicting in
symbol "the
identical in-breaking kingdom, often with striking
parallels in
both imagery and significance to specific parables
of Jesus."12
This close kinship of physical and
verbal proclamation of the
kingdom, however, does not mean His miracles
have equal
standing with His words as means of revelation.
This is because
miracles by nature are mute witnesses; they are
dependent on
words to explain their origin and meaning.13
This idea goes back
to Deuteronomy 13:1-5, which states that a
prophet's authenticity
was tested not by his miraculous feats but by his
word. Miracles
were not required of true prophets. John the Baptist
"performed no
sign" (John 10:41), yet the people considered
him a prophet of God
(Matt.
21:26; Mark 11:32; Luke 20:6). The fact that one can do
miracles is no guarantee of a true relationship
to God (Matt. 7:21-
23).
Therefore it is no accident that Jesus' ministry began with
His
teachirig.14 It is also not surprising that
the miracles are
10 A parallel spiritual blindness to both Jesus'
miracles and parables is noted in
Mark
6:52 (cf. 8:21) and 4:13 (cf. 7:18). Confirming this is Blomberg's
observation
that Jesus used the same Old Testament passage,
Isaiah 6:9–10, to rebuke the disci-
ples mildly for their
dullness after both a miracle (Mark 8:18) and a parable (4:11–
12)
(Craig L. Blomberg, "The Miracles as
Parables," in The Miracles of Jesus, ed.
David
Wenham and Craig Blomberg [
11 Alan Richardson, The Miracle-Stories of the Gospels (London:
SCM, 1941), 86;
cf.
James Kallas, The Significance of
the Synoptic Miracles (London: SPCK, 1961),
2.
12 Blomberg, "The
Miracles as Parables," 347. Blomberg argues for
the specific
parabolic content of the nature miracles. For
example he says the fig tree miracle
teaches the impending eschatological destruction
of
transformation of water to wine
teaches the purification and transformation of the
Mosaic
religion (ibid., 336). Raymond Brown echoes many of
these sentiments ("The
Gospel
Miracles," in The Bible in Current Catholic Thought, ed.
John L. McKenzie
[
F.
N. Davey ("Healing in the New Testament,"
in The Miracles and the Resurrec-
tion [
Mind, 316).
13
Albrecht
Oepke, "i]a<omai" in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament,
3
(1965):
212; cf. T'welftree, "EI
DE . . . EGW EKBALLW TA DAIMONIA," 387–88, and
Gerhard
Friedrich, "khru<ssw," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 3
(1965):
714.
14 This is not to say that
miracles had no intrinsic value as signs or that the Phar-
isees were wrong in their request
for a sign (Deut. 18:22), but the sign-value of mir-
acles was certainly qualified
by the accompanying proclamation.
Miracles and Jesus' Proclamation of the
more open to other interpretations in the Gospels
(e.g., Matt.
12:24:
"This man casts out demons only by Beelzebul the
ruler of
the demons").15
MIRACLES
AND THE NATURE OF THE KINGDOM
Jesus' miraculous demonstration of
the
cannot be separated from His proclamation of the
kingdom.
Therefore,
like the parables and the other verbal means of com-
municating the kingdom, miracles
have a revelatory function in
the ministry of Jesus and the early church.
MIRACLES
AND THE HOLY SPIRIT
Matthew 12:28—"But if I cast
out demons by the Spirit of God
[Luke
11:20 has ‘finger of God’], then the
come upon you"—establishes the connection
between miracles (in
this case exorcism) and the kingdom. It also
establishes the
means of the connection, namely, the Holy Spirit.
Miracles are
the Spirit's work in Jesus' life, and, as such,
they continue an Old
Testament
pattern of Yahweh acting redemptively by the Spirit's
miraculous power.
In the Old Testament the Spirit is
"the medium through which
God's
presence in the midst of his people becomes a reality."16 Di-
vine power was effected through certain individuals
who were
anointed with the Spirit, the result being
prophetic utterance, and
at times rniracles.17 The same Spirit
of Yahweh will also play a
15
See note 3. E. P. Sanders emphasizes the dilemma of unqualified
miracles
among the options in the first century.
"Miracles were sufficiently common, suffi-
ciently diverse, and
sufficiently scattered among holy men, messianic pretenders,
magicians and temples that we cannot draw firm
inferences from them in order to
explain what social type Jesus fits best or what
his intention really was" (Jesus
and Judaism [
16
Walther
Eichrodt cites Psalm 106:33; Zechariah 7:12; Isaiah
34:16; 63:11ff.; and
Haggai
2:5 (Theology of the Old Testament, trans J. A. Baker, 2 vols. [
17 Max Turner ("The
Spirit and the Power of Jesus' Miracles in the Lucan
Con-
ception," Novum Testamentum 33 [1991]: 124-52) uses the
Septuagint here, Targum
Jonathan
at Judges 14:6, 19; 15:14, etc.; 2 Kings 2:15, and the Septuagint's pneu?ma
qeou? in
Genesis 1:3 (versus the Targum "wind") to
answer Eduard Schweizer 's
attempt ("pneu?ma," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament,
6 [1968]: 407,
409)
at positing a distinction in Judaism between the prophetic spirit and the
power-source of miracles. By such
distinction Schweizer tried to deny that the
Spirit
was the source of miracles in Luke's Gospel. In support of the more
traditional view, Eichrodt
notes that though the miracles of Moses and Elijah may
not have been ascribed directly to the Spirit, they
were ascribed to those who are
acknowledged elsewhere as being
mediators of the Spirit: Moses in Numbers 11:17,
25, and Elijah in 2 Kings 2:9, 15 (Theology of the Old Testament, 2:51, n.
7).
He adds
later that in the period of the Judges and prophetic
portions of the Old Testament
"the ruach is primarily nothing
other than the supra-sensible causality of the
286
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / July–September
1996
role in the New Covenant (Jer.
31:33-34; Ezek. 36:26-27), toward
the end time when the Spirit will be poured out as
the Cleanser and
Renewer of God's people (Isa.
32:15; 44:3; Ezek. 18:31; 36:25-27;
37:14;
39:29; Joel 2:28-32). In addition the One specially anointed
by the Spirit will rule as God's Servant during
those times (Isa.
11:2;
42:1; 48:16; 59:19-21; 61:1).18
The New Testament presentation of
the kingdom in Jesus'
ministry builds on this foundation of the
Spirit's function in the
Old
Testament.19 He was conceived by the Spirit (Luke 1:35)—the
divine Word united with the Spirit. At His baptism, He
was desig-
nated God's Spirit-anointed
Messenger destined to cleanse,
judge, and baptize with the Spirit (Matt. 12:18).20
His ministry in
word and deed is a manifestation of the Spirit (Matt.
12:28; Acts
10:38),21 which is why rejection of the Spirit was the
only issue of
eternal consequence (Mark 3:28-29).22
His resurrection and ex-
altation crowned Him as the Lord
of the Spirit (Acts 2:33). His
kingdom is entered through an act of the Spirit
(John 3:5, 8), and it
is experienced through the Spirit (Rom. 14:17).
The church is em-
powered to preach by the Spirit (Acts 1:8), and
it works miracles
through the Spirit (Rom. 15:18-19; 1 Cor. 12:7-11; Gal. 3:5; Heb.
2:2-4).23
miraculous" (ibid., 52). He cites Gunkel (Die Wirkungen des Geistes,1899) to
say the
operations of the Spirit lie first and foremost in
the miraculous. Wonder-working
established the authority of the prophet who was the
mediator of the divine life's
entrance into the world (ibid., 1:325, n. 3;
326). To Eichrodt's observations one could
also add the fact that the Septuagint supplies
"Spirit of the Lord" to numerous
contexts that must be understood as miraculous (Judg. 14:6, 19; 15:14; cf. 1 Kings
18:12;
2 Kings 2:16; Ezek. 2:2; 3:12, 14, 24; 8:3; 11:1, 5, 24; 37:1; 43 5).
18 On the Spirit in the
last times see D. Wilhelm Michaelis, Reich Gottes and
Geist Gottes nach
dem Neuen Testament (
Erik
Sjoberg, "irveiDua,"
in Theological Dictionary of the New
Testament, 6 (1968):
384–86;
and Eberhard Kamlah,
"Spirit," in The New International Dictionary of
New Testament Theology, 3:692.
19 See James D. G. Dunn,
"Spirit and Kingdom," Expository
Times 82 (1970–71): 36-40.
20 See Colin Brown's case
for the inauguration of Jesus' role as Spirit-baptizer
occurring during His earthly ministry, not His
heavenly one (Miracles and the
Critical Mind, 301).
21 Cf. Luke's development of Jesus as a
"prophet mighty in deed and word" (24:19).
22
D.
Gerhard Delling, "Das Verstandnis des Wunders im Neuen Testament,"
Zeitschrift fur Systematische Theologie 24 (1955), 272–73.
23 O'Reilly argues that
the transfer of the prophetic spirit from Elijah to Elisha
in 2 Kings 2:1-12 was paradigmatic for Luke's
transfer of power from Jesus to His
disciples at Pentecost. O'Reilly relies on the
parallel of Sirach 48:12, which states
"Elisha was filled with his spirit," and on Acts 2:4
along with Elijah's general sig-
nificance as a type for Jesus in
Luke (Word and Sign in the Acts of the
Apostles: A
Study in Lucan Theology [
46-48).
church: "There is plentiful evidence that the
early preaching of Christianity was
Miracles
and Jesus' Proclamation of the
MIRACLES
AND THE NEW AGE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
Miracles
and Old Testament prophetic hope. Beyond Matthew
12:28
the Gospel writers went to great lengths to affirm Jesus'
miracles as revelations of the promised New Age.
The Spirit who
worked miracles was present in Jesus, and the effects
of that
Spirit,
namely, the miracles themselves, spoke of the arrival of
the prophesied New Age. Jesus' healing the lame,
deaf, and blind,
and raising the dead (Matt. 11:5) are viewed as
typical of the
Gospel
miracle accounts, clearly drawing from promises in Isa-
iah 26:19; 29:18; 35:4-7;
42:18; and 61:1-2.24 In Mark 7:32, the
word describing the deaf mute who was "hardly
able to talk"
(mogila<lon) is a hapax legomenon found again in
the Septuagint
in Isaiah 35:6b: "the tongue of the dumb [mogila<lwn]
will shout far
joy." The release of his tongue from its
"bond" (desmo>j, Mark
7:35)
is prefigured by the release from oppressive bands predicted
in Isaiah 58:6.25 Jesus, who takes
mankind's infirmities and
carries away their sickness (Matt. 8:17, quoting
Isa. 53:4a), and
who "healed them all" (Matt. 12:15) is
Isaiah's Suffering Servant
(Matt.
12:18-21, quoting Isa. 42:1-4).26
The fact that Jesus' miracles are
oriented toward individuals
and not the nation as a whole (like those of Moses)
also unites
Him
with the eschatological hopes of the prophets who predicted a
new age with only a whole people.27 Gerhardsson has also
noted
Matthew's
concern to present Jesus ministering in Jewish re-
gions,28 and particularly the region of
accompanied by miraculous powers, and that these
powers were believed to be man-
ifestations of the presence in the
Church of the Holy Spirit, whose outpouring was
regarded as the sign of the drawing nigh of the
`last days" (Miracle—Stories of the
Gospels, 39-40).
24 O. Betz and Werner
Grimm, Wesen and Wirklichkeit der Wunder Jesu
(Frankfurt: Lang, 1977), 31; and
Grimm
notes from Mekh. 15:1 that the healings of Isaiah
35:5 (Matt. 11:5) were a
messianic expectation among the rabbis (Weil Ich Dich Liebe, 127-28, n. 304).
Heal-
ing the blind and the deaf
was also thought to include spiritual blindness and deaf-
ness. Cf. the conclusions from Herman L. Strack and Paul Billerbeck, Kommentar
zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud and Midrasch, 2 vols. (Munich: Beck,
1969),
1:593-95.
25 Betz and Grimm, Wesen and Wirklichkeit,
31, and 31, n. 39; Craig Blomberg,
"Healing," in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, 302. Luke also said Jesus' exor-
cisms were like release from
bondage (Luke 13:16).
26 Held, "Matthew as Interpreter," 261-62. Held says Isaiah 53 is
not about suffer-
ing or lowliness, but
mighty works of power (ibid., 262, n. 3).
27 Betz and Grimm observe
that individuals were not the focus of Old Testament
healings until the prophecies of the coming age.
Elijah is the the notable exception,
which possibly explains why Jesus was compared to him
(Brown, "The Gospel Mir-
acles," 185, n. 6).
28 Matthew, for example,
omitted Mark's mention of the effect in
of Jesus' ministry (Mark 3:1-8).
288
BIBLIOTHEC:A
SACRA I July—September 1996
Isaiah 9:1-2 (Matt. 4:15-16). "The evangelist is
most interested
in illuminating Jesus' association with
has visited his people."29 Finally,
the eschatological divine
judgment of Micah 7:1-6 and Jeremiah 8:13 is
prefigured in the
cursing of the fig tree, and the abundance of
the forthcoming Mes-
siah feast (Isa. 25:6-9) is taught in the various gift-miracles
(turning water into wine, feeding of the five thousand).30
Miracles and the Sabbath. The
prophesied coming age of sal-
vation is also revealed by
Jesus' many miracles. Several times
the Gospel writers noted the Sabbath was the day
when Jesus per-
formed many miracles of exorcism or healing (Mark 3:1-6;
Luke
13:10-17; 14:1-6; John 5:1-18; 9:1-14). These occasional
notations, plus Jesus' challenge to the synagogue
official about the
woman with the hemorrhage ("Should she not have
been released
from this bond on the Sabbath day?" Luke
13:16), seem to demand
some significance for the Sabbath day and Jesus'
miracles.
Observance of the Sabbath day goes
back to the Decalogue
(Exod. 20:8-11), but its principle was also extended in
servance of the Sabbath year
(Deut. 15:2) and the year of Jubilee
(Lev.
25:13). In Isaiah, the year of Jubilee was any image associ-
ated with the eternal rest
of the future age when all creation will
be released from its captivity into the salvation
of Yahweh (Isa.
58;
61:1-3).31 Jesus followed this eschatological theme of Jubilee
when He proclaimed from Isaiah 61 that the
"favorable year of the
Lord"
was being fulfilled in His teaching and healing ministry
(Luke
4:16-21). Once again proclamation and deed in Jesus'
ministry corroborate one another as His miracles
prefigure the
eternal rest and release sought for in the new
sabbatical age.32
29 Gerhardsson, The Mighty Acts of Jesus according to Mathew,
36.
The sum-
mary of Jesus' ministry
"among the people" in Matthew 4:23 wad 9:35 is a specific
reference to the Jewish people (ibid., 34, citing
T. Zahn, Das Evangelium des
Mattheius [
30 See Blomberg,
"The Miracles as Parables," passim.
31 R. B. Sloan,
"Jubilee," in Dictionary of
Jesus and the Gospels, 396-97. Cf. also
George
W. Buchanan's discussion of sabbatical theology in
quences of the Covenant (Leiden: Brill, 1970),
1-15. The year of Jubilee as an escha-
tological theme is also found in
Daniel 9:24-27 and the noncanonical Jubilees 1:21—
25.
The writings of the
Isaiah
61:1-2 (11Q Melchizedek; Geza Vermes,
The
ed.
[
sianic figure who would come
and establish "the favorable year of the Lord" (M. P.
Miller,
"The Function of Is 61:1-2 in 11Q Melchizedek," Journal of Biblical Litera-
ture 88 [1969]: 467—69).
32 The eschatological
meaning of Jesus' Sabbath healings is a matter of some dis-
pute. Some scholars see the
meaning coming primarily from the occasion of the
first Sabbath when God rested after His creative
work. The New Age would be the
Miracles
and Jesus' Proclamation of the
Miracles and divine mercy.
Because Yahweh's salvation
was restorative and liberating for His covenant
people, the
prophets naturally anticipated it as the supreme
expression of His
lovingkindness and mercy (ds,H,).33 Yahweh's
favor was guaran-
teed by His commitment under the covenant. His ds,H, meant par-
doning grace as well as
faithful and merciful aid to His people.
His
covenantal sort was inherently active. Thus miracles from
the wonder-working prophets were viewed as
expressions of the
succoring hand of Yahweh (1 Kings 17:16–24; 2
Kings 4:1–7; 7:7.–
2).34
Based on this faithful action35 the prophets portrayed the
coming age as the time when Yahweh's ultimate ds,H, (cf. Isa. 54:8;
55:3; Mic. 7:20) and
compassion (MymiHEra; Isa.
14:1; 49:13; 54:7; Jer.
12:15;
33:26; Ezek. 39:25; Mic. 7:19; Zech. 1:16) would be
revealed.
The New Testament follows up on this
idea in such a way that
Christ's
First Advent is understood as the expression of God's
mercy to humanity (Titus 3:5), but Jesus' miracles
are a particu-
lar demonstration of God's lovingkindness. Based on God's
commitment to the covenant, His mercy issues forth
in tangible
action to fulfill the messianic mandate of proclaiming
and en-
acting righteousness.36 The miracles are
particular and neces-
time when Yahweh would work again and create a new
world. Jesus' Sabbath mira-
cles then should be seen as
the recreative acts of the new salvation time. Raymond
Brown
expresses this view, saying the Sabbath miracle "was primarily to empha-
size [Jesus'] miraculous work as a renewed
creativity. God had rested from the
work of the first creation on the sabbath; now he had resumed his creative work as
he established his dominion, saved man from Satan,
and re-created him in his own
image" ("The Gospel Miracles," 188).
Also Hendrickx sees a creative act in Mark
7:37,
in which a Sabbath miracle evoked the statement from bystanders, "He has
done all things well," in apparent reflection
of the benediction to God's creative
work in Genesis 1 (Herman Hendrickx,
The Miracle Stories [
Harper and Row, 1987], 13). Grimm and Betz and Davey see Jesus' healings on the
Sabbath
as demonstrations of the final rest anticipated in the eschatological ju-
bilee. For them the creative
aspect of Jesus' miracles articulated by Brown does not
uniquely explain the significance of the Sabbath
occasion. All Jesus' miracles of
healing and exorcism are creative and
restorative acts. They are all His and the Fa-
ther's works (John 5:19), but
the special mention of the Sabbath presents specificity
to the rest and release Jesus' miracles gave those
who were healed (e.g., the woman
freed from her bonds on the Sabbath, Luke 13:16). The
focus is not so much on the
fact that Yahweh works again, but on the rest
provided as a result of His work
(Grimm,
Weil Ich Dich Liebe, 98-99; Betz and
Grimm, Wesen and Wirklichkeit der
Wunder Jesu, 34-35; 35, n. 50; and Davey, "Healing in the New Testament," 54).
33 R. Bultmann,
"e@leoj," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament,
2 (1964): 479-87.
34 Eichrodt,
Theology of the Old Testament, 1:325.
35 Bultmann
notes Ion is not primarily a disposition, but "the act or demonstra-
tion of assisting
faithfulness" (e@leoj," 480).
36 Righteousness (dikaiosu<nh) is the appropriate fulfillment of a
covenant rela-
tionship and therefore is
related to mercy (e@leoj). The end-time expectation of
messianic righteousness was complete satisfaction
and enjoyment of the covenant.
290
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / July—September
1996
sary expressions of God's
covenant commitment and promise for
the future. The idea of the in-breaking of divine
love and
kindness in the kingdom without appropriate
changes in the
physical well-being of people was impossible
under the righteous
demands of covenant-mercy.37
Therefore the Gospel writers often
noted Jesus' covenant-mercy (e@leoj) as the motivation behind His
miraculous deeds (e.g., Matt. 9:13; 20:30, 34).38
His miracles
were not simply proofs for belief; "they were
rather the natural
reaction of his spirit to sickness and suffering
in the world and
his desire for God's grace to be known in those he
touched."39
MIRACLES
AND THE
The Old Testament promise of the
final Sabbath rest and the
presence of God's eschatological ds,H, in the kingdom. necessitated
the destruction of the forces opposed to the divine
order (Isa. 29:20;
33:14;
61:2). All blessings of the age to come will follow after the
people's enemies are subjugated. Isaiah told the
captives they
could not be freed unless the mighty man is first
subdued and
Yahweh
"contends with the one who contends with you" (Isa.
49:24-25).
In the Gospels, Jesus' role as the One who contends with
the enemy of Yahweh's people is the fundamental
drama of His
ministry. Its importance to the complete picture
of Jesus' miracles
and proclamation of the kingdom cannot be
overstated.40
Without doubt Jesus came to make
"open war on the reign of
Satan."41
In Matthew and Luke it is significant that the drama of
See
G. Schrenk, "dikaiosunh<," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament,
2
(1964):
195; and Gunther Bornkamm,
"End-Expectation and the Church in Mat-
thew," in Tradition and Interpretation in Matthew,
ed. Gunt her Bornkamm,
Gerhard
Barth,
and Heinz J. Held (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963).
37 O. Betz, "Heilung," in Theologische Realenzyklopadie (
1985),
14:766.
38 Held, "Matthew as Interpreter," 263.
39 Kelsey, Healing
and Christianity, 99.
40 On Jesus' ministry as
confrontation with the
nificance of the Synoptic Miracles, 78ff.;
History, 114; Brown, "The
Gospel Miracles," 187; Grimm, Weil Ich Lich Liebe, 88-93;
H.
C. Kee, "The Terminology of Mark's Exorcism
Stories," New Testament Studies
14
(1967-1968): 232-46; idem, Miracle in the
Early Christian World (
CT:
Gerhardsson,
The Mighty Acts of Jesus according to Matthew, 33; Philippe
Menoud ("La Signification du
miracle selon le Nouveau Testament," Revue
d'Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses 28–29 [1948–1949]: 176-79; Grelot,
"Les
Miracles
de Jesus," 68–70; Latourelle, The Miracles of Jesus, 284; Rudolf Pesch, Jesus Ureigene
Taten? (Freiburg: Herder,
1970), 151–55; and Hendrickx, The Miracle Stories, 25–28.
41 Franz Mussner, The Miracles of Jesus,
trans. Albert Wimmer (Notre Dame,
IN:
Pre-Christian sources for the
eschatological warfare of Yahweh and His ene-
mies come predominantly from
the intertestamental period. Often thought to be a
Miracles
and Jesus' Proclamation of the
Jesus'
ministry opens in conflict with Satan in His temptations
(Matt.
4:1-11; Luke 4:1-12). In Mark 1:23-28 exorcism follows
soon after the programmatic declaration of the
kingdom's ad-
vent. The cries of the demons, "Have You come to destroy us?"
(Luke
4:34; Mark 1:24), are naturally understood as tokens of the
conflict. The connection between the
cism is made more explicit
in Matthew 12:28, which, as already
seen, brings together the Holy Spirit, the kingdom,
and exorcism.
Luke
also revealed the kingdom's nexus with exorcism in the ac-
count of the ministry of the seventy (Luke 10:18). In
Luke 13:82,
Jesus
summarized His whole ministry before the Cross in refer-
ence to exorcism and
healing: "Behold, I cast out demons and per-
form cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I
reach My goal."
The cosmic dimensions of the
conflict are underscored by the
New
Testament's presumption that every malady and disorder of
the creation was ultimately rooted in the chaos of
Satan's king-
dom. For example, though sickness in the Old
Testament was the
result of sin,42 Jesus understood illness
as being related to Satan
as well. The sick woman of Luke 13 was one
"whom Satan has
bound for eighteen long years" (13:16).43
In Matthew the lines
between disease and demons blur as qerapeu<ein
("to heal") speaks
of both healing diseases and casting out demons
(4:24; 10:8).44 Je-
sus' rebuke (e]pitima<w) of the storm (Mark 4:37-41) was the same
relatively late development in Judaism (depending
on one's dating of Daniel; see
Adolf von Harnack, The Expansion of Christianity in the First
Three Centuries,
trans. and ed. James Moffatt
[reprint,
and Kee, Miracle in the Early Christian World,
155), spiritual warfare of the same
caliber as the New Testament reached a zenith in
these centuries just before Chris-
tianity. During this period the
antagonism between Satan and his agents and God
and His agents developed in intensity and
specificity from the Old Testament.
Josephus,
for example, reported unusual legends of the Jews about Solomon's great
learning that enabled him to defeat demonic
powers in exorcism (The Antiquities
of the Jews 8.45). In works such as 1 Enoch 10:11-15,
54-55; Testament of Levi 18:12;
Testament
of Moses 10:1-2; Testament of Asher 7:3; and Benjamin 3:3, the advent of
the
There
will be cataclysmic and cosmic upheaval as the supernatural minions of the
evil one do battle with the Messiah and His forces.
The earth of the devil goes
through its final throes before the messianic
reign of peace begins. The priestly
sect at
Melchizedek,
Isaiah 61 is exegeted according to the dualistic
worldview of the
other apocalyptic writers, which connected exorcism,
the
anointing of the Spirit (See Grimm, Weil Ich Dich Liebe, 97).
42 See Brown's discussion in "The Gospel
Miracles," 187-88.
43 Kallas
argues a similar case for Mark 3:10; 5:29, 34; and Luke 7:21, in which the
Greek
word for disease (ma<stic) also means
"whip" or "scourge." He puts this forth
as a possible link between physical sickness and
the devil's oppression of his sub-
jects (Kallas, The Significance of the Synoptic Miracles,
79).
44 Noted by Gerhardsson, The Mighty Acts of
Jesus according to Matthew, 33.
292
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / July–September
1996
as His rebuke of demons (Mark 1:25), which was the
same as His
rebuke of illness (Luke 4:39).45 Finally,
Jesus conquered the last
weapon of Satan, namely, death. Death is the ultimate
enemy and
stands in the ultimate position in Jesus' summary of
His liberat-
ing miracles in Matthew
11:5. For John the resurrection of
Lazarus
marks the climax of Jesus' ministry before His own
death and resurrection.46 Thus by His
miracles Jesus waged war
on many fronts against a hostile force.
MIRACLES
AND PURITY
Three specific points of contact
call for consideration of the
subject of purity. First, Jesus' miracles of
exorcism necessarily
brought the "holy" Spirit in contact
with "unclean." spirits (e.g.,
Mark
1:21-28), which were the ultimate source of all impurity.47
Second,
the primary subjects of Jesus' miracles were those
deemed "unclean" in His day.48
Third, according to His ene-
mies, Jesus' ministry to the
unclean compromised His own purity
by the standards of His day.49
45 Grimm sees the divine
rebuke in the Gospel exorcism accounts as going back to
the Old Testament tradition of the powerful words
of Yahweh commanding order
from chaos at the creation (Weil Ich Dich Liebe, 110; cf. Isa. 50:2;
51.:9–10; 54:9). Paul
and Peter both referred to nature as affected by
sin (Rom. 8:22; 2 Pet. 3:12–13).
46 For Paul, death is the
last enemy (1 Cor 15:26). For the first Christians
Jesus'
victory over death was the critical blow to
Satan's kingdom (Acts '2:32–33, 36; 5:31).
See
Brown, "The Gospel Miracles," 188–89.
47 Demons themselves were
thought to be unclean by their association with
corpses and graves as well as their personal
immorality (Friedrich Hauck,
"a]ka<qartoj, a]kaqarsi<a," in
Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 3 [1965]:
428).
The source of all impurity in general was thought to
be their destructive
working against God's will (Baruch A. Levine, In the Presence of the Lord: Aspects
of Ritual in Ancient
Ancient Judaism [
48 Gerhard Delling ("Botschaft and Wunder im Wirken
Jesu," Der historische
Jesus and der kerygmatische Christus, ed. Helmut Ristow
and Karl Matthiae
[
dence that Jesus healed the
blind, the lame, and lepers as well as eating with tax
gatherers and sinners, given the purity system as
evidenced in Josephus (The Jew-
ish Wars 6.425–27), Qumran (1QSa 2:3–9; the
materials (Menachoth
9:8). Neusner summarizes Josephus on the classes prohib-
ited from the temple:
foreigners; those with gonorrhea; menstruating women; any-
one unclean by contact with a corpse; lepers; and
men not thoroughly clean from
other defect (The
Idea of Purity in Ancient Judaism, 41).
49 Some examples in Mark's
account are these: Jesus touched lepers (1:41); He
was touched by the woman with the issue of blood
(5:25–29); He entered the house
where a girl lay dead (5:35–43); He touched her
corpse (5:35–43); He healed a Gen-
tile (7:24–30); He used spittle in healing (7:31–36;
8:22–26); He healed on the Sabbath
(1:29–31; 3:1–6); and He fellowshiped
with the unclean (2:15–17; 8 1-10). For a more
complete enumeration of Jesus
"offenses," see David Rhoads, "Social Criticism:
Crossing
Boundaries," in Mark and Method: New
Approaches in Biblical Studies,
Miracles
and Jesus' Proclamation of the
It is difficult to overestimate the
impact the purity system had
on the religious life and culture of
Ideas
of purity and impurity are woven as deeply into the fabric of
life then as was the dualism that saw everything in
terms of the
conflict between God's kingdom and Satan's.50
The source of Is-
rael's ideas of purity was
ultimately the holiness of Yahweh as set
forth in the Mosaic law: "You shall be holy, for
I the Lord your God
am holy" (e.g., Lev. 19:2).51 From
this standard the Israelites
gained and maintained boundaries that regulated and
protected
the cosmological, social, and personal aspects of
their lives.52
The
cosmological boundaries in
guished and protected the
holiness of God from defilement. These
boundaries governed human approach to God and kept
God from
withdrawing His presence. They are the basis of all
that was
clean and unclean, and they were centered around the
temple
where God dwelt on the earth. The prodigious
practical impact of
all uncleanness, therefore, was that one was denied
entrance to
the temple and shut off from the center of
logical boundaries were essentially the
cosmological ones real-.
ized horizontally. The
sanctity of what happened in the temple
ed. Janice Capel
Anderson and Stephen D. Moore (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992),
149–50;
and Stephen Westerholm, Jesus and Scribal Authority (
1978),
67-69.
50 Neusner
notes that purity was an "essential element" in the interpretation of
the culture of
daism,
28). In the twentieth century there has been debate as to the importance of
ritual purity in the second temple period. Buehler
argued that only a few priests
observed high level ritual purity (Der galilaische
'Am-ha 'Ares des zweiten
Jahrhunderts
[1906]).
Scholarship, however, is moving against this position on the
strength of G. Alon, Jews, Judaism and the Classical World,
trans. Israel Abra-
ham (Jerusalem: Magnes,
1977), 146-89, 190-234. See Neusner, The Idea of Purity in
Ancient Judaism, x; and Westerholm, Jesus and
Scribal Authority, 62-65.
51 Mary Douglas argues
convincingly that holiness, defined as separateness and
completeness, is the basis for
everything that is categorized clean and unclean in
the Levitical law. The
issue is not hygiene, aesthetics, separation from pagan prac-
tices, nor simply divine
whim, but orderliness and conformity to class (Purity and
Danger [
52 See Rhoads,
"Social Criticism: Crossing Boundaries," 152–54; and Jacob Mil-
grom, "Purity and
Impurity," in Encyclopaedia Judaica,
13:1405–14.
53 On the significance of
the temple, Neusner states, "The Temple supplied
to pu-
rity its importance in the
religious life. As the
as the cult supplied the nexus between
closely to both, could readily serve as an image
of either divine favor or man's loy-
alty to God. From that fact
followed the assignment of impurity to all that stood
against the
Ancient Judaism, 15). Neusner
adds later, "All rites of purification aimed at one
goal: to permit participation in the cult"
(ibid., 118). Also see Roger P. Booth, Jesus
and the Laws of Purity: Tradition History and Legal History in
Mark 7
(
JSOT, 1986), 152.
294 BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / July–September 1996
was what separated Jews from Gentiles, and these
boundaries
came to be the means of keeping Gentiles out.54
The bodily
"boundary" of an individual was his or her skin.
Personal purity
was violated by the presence outside the body of
what normally
should be inside. Breaks in the skin, issues of blood,
or semen
made one unclean.
In the first century the Sadducees
and the Pharisees were two
sects that enforced the purity of worship and the
temple.55 Anyone
who violated this purity standard and therefore
threatened the
temple would naturally be confronted by them.
Considered in this
light, it is easier to understand the prominence of
these groups in
the miracles stories and also their antagonism. In
their view,
Jesus'
disregard for purity where His miracles were concerned
(see notes 48 and 49) was an assault on the temple and God
Himself. Of course many other incidents in Jesus'
ministry were
offensive to the temple, in their opinion,56
but the violation of
purity in the miracles raises an issue regarding the
kingdom of
God. How does the kingdom interface with the purity
system of Is-
rael? Do the miracles
demonstrate anything about Jesus' under-
standing of purity where the
Berger discusses the interface of
purity, kingdom, and mira-
cles in Jesus'
"offensive holiness," as he calls it.57 Berger shows
that while Jesus and the early Christians had much
in common
with first-century Pharisees, particularly in the
belief that purity
was the fundamental eschatological problem,58
their views on the
relationship of purity to impurity
differed. Purity for the Phar-
54 Rhoads, "Social
Criticism: Crossing Boundaries," 153. The New Testament pic-
ture of Gentile impurity
(Acts 10:28; 11:3; Gal. 2:12–13) may not have been a strong
tenet of ancient
first century (Westerholm, Jesus and Scribal Authority, 65). The
early Halakah
condemned association with non-Jews on the grounds
that idols and their atten-
dants were unclean (Alon, Jews, Judaism
and the Classical World, 147–48).
55 Of these two, the
Pharisees were the more strict in their observance of
purity
rites. The ground of their identity as a distinct
sect was their belief that temple
purity rites were normative beyond the priesthood.
Their particular views here
were manifested in daily life around the' taking of
meals, which was supposed to be
done in a state of ritual purity and only with
others of similar "pure" status, and
the careful giving of tithes and offerings. For a
concise summary of what is known
of first-century P'harisaism,
see Klaus Berger, "Jesus als Pharisaer
and Friihe
Christen
als Pharisaer," Novum Testamentum
30 (1988): 231–37.
56 Jesus assaulted the
temple in His teaching (e.g., Mark 14:58: "I will destroy this
temple made with hands, and in three days I will build
another made without
hands") and in His prophetic actions ("cleansing"
the temple, Mark 11:15--17).
57 Berger, "Jesus als Pharisaer and Fruhe Christen als Pharisaer," 240–41.
58 Ibid. 239. See for example the metaphors of
cleansing in John's prophecy of Je-
sus' ministry in Luke
3:16-17.
Miracles and Jesus' Proclamation of the
isees was a matter of
defense; it was a hedge, a means of protec-
tion against being
contaminated by what was impure. It de-
manded separation from the
polluted. Purity was something
fragile and vulnerable.
Jesus, on the other hand,
demonstrated an offensive holiness
"that is not threatened or damaged by impurity, it is not a
passive
quality only to be established, which is liable
to pollution and al-
ways needs to be protected."59 Armed
with the holy power of the
kingdom He represented (i.e., the Holy Spirit),
Jesus crossed the
boundaries of the purity, reached into the realm of
the unclean,
and instead of being polluted Himself, He made
others pure. Je-
sus showed that the purity
of the kingdom is not in danger from
anything outside the individual. Purity of the
kingdom is some-
thing far more penetrating; purity is an issue of the
heart (Matt.
15:1-3,
25-28; Mark 7:15). This is why Jesus' healings were an
outward sign of the forgiveness of sin offered
from God (Mark
2:1-12;
John 5:14).60 Jesus, as Bearer of the purity of the kingdom,
made the external condition clean without suffering
pollution
Himself, and He went beyond that and healed the
heart. The issue
of the heart was why the purity of temple worship
came up short
and received Jesus' condemnation. On the one hand
external ob-
servance may too easily
overshadow demands God makes on the
heart; on the other hand external demands are too
simple a crite-
rion for judging the heart.61
So the kingdom is inherently ori-
ented toward purity, but it
is a purity that operates in the deepest
regions of the human heart,62 and
Jesus' miracles are indirect
testimony to that fact.
This discussion about the nature of
the kingdom as revealed
by Jesus' miracles, including their Old Testament
prophetic an-
tecedents, their occasion (viz.,
on the Sabbath), and their objects
(viz.,
the impure), point up three facts about the kingdom. Escha-
tologically, Jesus is the
fulfillment of the Old Testament
prophetic hope for
will ultimately be rest, restoration, liberation,
deliverance, and
redemption for all God's creation. Physically,
Jesus' miracles of
59 Ibid.,
240.
60 Betz, "Heilung," 14:766.
61 Westerholm, Jesus and Scribal Authority, 91; cf.
idem, "Clean and Unclean," in
Dictionary of Jesus and
the Gospels,
126-28; and Rhoads, "Social Criticism: Cross-
ing Boundaries,"
155-59.
62
Paul
wrote about the kingdom and purity: "I know and am convinced in the
Lord
Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but to him who thinks anything to be
unclean, to him it is unclean" (Rom.
14:14), and "the
and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy
in the Holy Spirit" (v. 17).
296 BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / July—September 1996
human needs point toward a physical fulfillment of
the Old
Testament
promises for human society, including national
promises for
physical side; Old Testament promises to
filled only in the spiritual realm. Just as miracles
show that the
lame and the blind experienced a physical
restoration, so the
promises to national
MIRACLES
AND THE INAUGURATOR OF THE KINGDOM
Another element of the kingdom
revealed by the miracles
was the messianic identity of the Miracle-worker.
In the Gospel
of John especially there can be no doubt that
miracles serve this
Christological
function (John 2:11; 4:53; 6:14; 7:31; 9:38; 11:4, 15,
45;
12:11; 20:30; cf. Matt. 14:22-33 and Mark 6:47-56). The mira-
cles in the Gospels first
confirm the message of God's in-break-
ing rule and then reveal
the identity of the messianic Ruler.63
They
are first eschatological and soteriological and then Christo-
logical, despite the subsequent reversal of this
paradigm in the
church's later apologetics.64 Given
that Jesus' miracles did have
some Christological and apologetic significance in
the New
Testament,
the question may be raised whether this significance
was a product of the Gospel writers, or whether miracles
were le-
gitimate messianic credentials
of the first century. Was the Mes-
siah expected to be a
Miracle-worker?
EXTRACANONICAL
WITNESSES
Any
discussion of the Messiah in the first century must tra-
verse the murky waters of Jewish eschatological
beliefs before
Christianity. Recent studies have
shown that in pre-Christian
times there was less uniformity in the expectations
of "the Mes-
siah" than has usually
been thought.65 In the first place scholars
63 Delling,
"Botschaft and Wunder,"
393-95; idem, "Das Verse:andnis des blun-
ders," 275; Boobyer, "The Gospel Miracles," 42; Brown,
"The Gospel Miracles," 186-
87.
Whether asked by the devil, Herod, the Pharisees, or the crowds, Jesus refused
to do miracles for His own credentials (Matt. 4:5;
12:38-42; Mark 6:1-6; 8:11-13;
15:31-32;
Luke 23:6-12).
64 Colin Brown details the
church's heavy use of the miracles in defense of Jesus'
identity (Miracles
and the Critical Mind, 3-20). Cf. Eric R. Dodds, Pagan and
Christian in an Age of
Anxiety
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965),
124-25.
Similarly, Brown notes how this apologetic function of miracles is overem-
phasized ("The Gospel Miracles,"
186).
65 See James H. Charlesworth, "The Messiah in the Pseudepigrapha,"
in Aufstieg
and Niedergang der
Romischen Welt (Berlin: de Gruyter,
1979), 19.1.188-218; Rus-
sell, Method and Message, 308-9; and Richard A.
Horsley and John S. Hanson,
Bandits,
Prophets and Messiahs: Popular Movements
in the Time of Jesus (San
Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1985), 88-92. Horsely and Hanson
note also how the term
Miracles and Jesus' Proclamation of the
are now seeing intertestamental
Judaism as a complex and
richly varied phenomenon that had no orthodox center
before A D.
70.66
In the second place, given the breadth and history of the term
itself, there is serious doubt "Messiah" was
used as a specific title
in the intertestamental
literature.67 Third, when the royal
anointed figure does show up in the literature,
his appearance is a
notably secondary element of the apocalyptic
hope and somewhat
amorphous in the details.68
Many scholars deny that this
eschatological royal figure was
expected to work miracles. It is ironic that much
of this verdict is
founded on post-A.D. 70 rabbinic literature,
which may be charac-
terized as somewhat
anticharismatic,69 anti-Christian,70 and in
most cases at least a century too late. Still, Delling maintains
this conclusion from the silence of Judaism for a
miracle-work-
ing Messiah, as reported in
the studies of Strack and Biller-
beck.71 The editors of Schurer's The History
of the Jewish People
in the Age of Jesus Christ back up their view with Klausner's fa
mous statement that
"the Messiah is never mentioned anywhere
in the Tannaitic
literature as a wonder-worker per se."72
"Messiah"
has been synthesized into one monolithic category under the weight; of
Christian theology.
66 The Tannaitic
works representing orthodoxy in Judaism are dated one or two
centuries after A.D. 70, thereby giving some
credence to Charlesworth's conclusion
that "Judaism did not flow unilaterally and
without development from the frst
century B.C. to the third century A.D." ("The Messiah in the Pseudepigrapha,"
194).
67 Horsley and Hanson, Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs, 90. Horsley and Han-
son observe that the term "Messiah,"
meaning "an anointed one," was used for
prophets and priests as well as kings (cf. Russell, Method and Message, 304-7).
Charlesworth cites the studies of M.
de Jonge ("The Use of the Word `Anointed' in
the
Time of Jesus," Novum Testamentum 8
[1966]: 132–48) and Morton Smith
("Messiahs:
Robbers, Jurists, Prophets, and Magicians," Proceedings of the Ameri-
can Academy for Jewish Research 44 [1977]: 185–95) to
caution against careless use
of the term for only an eschatological royal
figure (idem, "The Messiah in the Pseu-
depigrapha," 196, n. 22).
Smith notes that in the pseudepigraphical literature
of
that time "there were both messiahs without
ends of the world and ends of the
world without messiahs" (Ibid.).
68 References to an
eschatological Messiah are missing altogether from the Apoc-
rypha. The
"Messiah," the "Anointed One," or the "Christ"
are mentioned in only
five of the other Jewish pseudepigraphical
documents. As to the difference of de-
tails one need only consider the Melchizedekian
Messiah of Qumran (11Q
Melchizedek),
the Levitical Messiah of the Hasmoneans,
and the prevailing no-
tions of the Davidic Messiah.
69 See Vermes, Jesus the Jew, 80–82.
70 Cf. the curses in the
Eighteen Benedictions and the portrayal of Jesus as a sor-
cerer.
71 "Der Verstandnis des Wunders,"
274, n. 18.
Pesch also agrees with Delling
(Jesu Ureigene Taten? 151).
72 Emil Schurer, The History of the
Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175
BC–35 AD), rev. and ed. Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar, and
Matthew Black, 3 vols.
298 BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / July–September 1996
In addition to the questionable
foundation of these opinions,
several points can be raised that present the
subject in a different
light. First, in accord with the Old Testament the intertestamen-
tal literature did affirm
the messianic age as a miraculous time.
In
fact miracles are quite the norm. Second Baruch 72, for exam-
ple, gives a full litany of
miraculous blessings of the Messiah's
kingdom, characterizing it as the time when “joy
shall then be
revealed, and rest shall appear. And then healing
shall descend
in dew, and disease shall withdraw."73
Second, from His secondary role in
the apocalyptic dramas
the Messiah is often not in view where the
implementation of
these blessings is concerned. God is the main figure
of the apoca-
lyptic kingdom and the writers
have little need of a human Mes-
siah.74 Sometimes when the
Messiah does appear, it is only after
God
has already acted (e.g., 1 Enoch 90). The Messiah has a pre-
dominantly passive status. Russell concludes that
the emphasis
in these works is "not so much on the Messiah
and his ushering
in of the kingdom as it is on the kingdom itself
as a mighty act of
God."75 However, nothing of the
intertestamental period ex-
pressly states the Messiah
figure would not work miracles.
Third, one allusion in the rabbinic
materials, cited by Bam-
mel,76 implies the necessity of the Messiah
working miracles. In
Threni R. ad Lam 2:2, Rabbi Akiba
is reported as believing in the
messiahship of Bar Kochba on account of his mi:racles.77 Nicol
attempts to discredit this by noting that
miracles were not widely
reported of Bar Kochba,78 but even if
the story was invented, it re-
mains that the Messiah was expected to do miracles.
Fourth, it may be justified to
broaden the scope of the inquiry
(Edinburgh:
Clark, 1973-87), 2:525, n. 42; and Joseph Klausner, The Messianic Idea
in
73 Quoted in Charlesworth, "The Messiah in the Pseudepigrapha,"
201. The Tar-
gums (Tg Is 53:8) also
expect many miracles in the day of the Messiah (Betz,
"Heilung," 14:766).
74 Russell, Method and Message, 309; and Klausner, The Messianic Idea in
Is-
rael,
524.
75 Russell, Method
and Message, 309-10.
76 E. Bammel,
"John Did No Miracle," in Miracles,
ed. C. F. D. Moue (
Mowbray, 1965),
188–89.
77 "Rabbi Shimon Ben Yohai taught: Akiba, my master,
was interpreting, A star
(bkvk) stepped forth from
Jacob (Num 24:17): Cozbah (xbzvk) stepped forth from Ja-
cob. When Rabbi Akiba saw
Cozbah, he said, ‘He is the messianic king!’" (J
Taanit
IV.68d,
in Revelation and Redemption: Jewish
Documents of Deliverance from the
Fall of Jerusalem to the
Death of Nahmanides, intro., trans., and notes by George
Wesley
Buchanan [
78 W. Nicol,
The Semeia in the
Fourth Gospel (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 80, n. 1.
Miracles and Jesus' Proclamation of the
to include themes inherent to the working of
miracles—like the
possession of prophetic power. Though possessing
the spirit of
prophecy did not guarantee that one could work
miracles, all le-
gitimate miracles did come from
it.79 If the Messiah did possess
the prophetic Spirit, at least the necessary
mechanism for doing
miracles would be present. The question here
would be, Does the
intertestamental literature see
messianic figures as the bearers
of God's prophetic Spirit?
The Psalms of Solomon point in the
right direction when it
describes the Messiah in terms of divine power.
And gird him with might to defeat unrighteous rulers, to purify
has made him strong in the Holy Spirit and wise
in counsel with
power and righteousness. And the good pleasure
of the Lord is
with him in strength and he will not be weak .
. . strong is he in
his works and might in the fear of God.80
Besides
the implicit opening this statement gives to the possibility
of a wonder-working Messiah who is "strong in
the Holy Spirit,"
Nicol has attempted to make the case more explicit
through the
Moses-Messiah
typology of the intertestamental period.81
He
contends that as Moses was a great prophet and
liberator, all the
expectations of the Messiah as a
second Moses would naturally
assume the Messiah was anointed with the same prophetic
Spirit.
The
office of the prophet is joined to that of king by way of second-
Moses
typology.82 Along the same lines Josephus
wrote of several
messianic figures of the first century who not
only claimed to be
prophets but also appeared to follow the Moses-Messiah
typology in
79 There was a significant
connection between prophets/prophecy and attestation
by miracles. See, for example, the appeal to a
miracle as a test to a prophet's mes-
sage in Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews 8:408. Anitra
Bingham Kolenkow says
that for Jews the "major motif is proof of
prophecy by miracle-sign" ("Relationship
between Miracle and Prophecy in the Greco-Roman
World and Early Christianity,"
in Aufstieg and Niedergang der Romische Welt [
23.2.1471).
80 Psalms of Solomon
17:24, 42-43, 47 (cited by W. Grundmann, "du<namai," in Theo-
logical Dictionary of the New Testament, 2 [1964]: 299).
81 Moses was a popular if
not official antitype for the end-time Messiah. He was
Moses
and Messiah typology in the intertestamental period,
Joachim Jeremias says
it "was very much alive in the NT period and
repeatedly exercised a decisive influ-
ence on the course of events"
("Mwush?j," in Theological Dictionary of the New Tes-
tament, 4 [1969]: 863). Cf.
Barnett, "Jewish Sign Prophets," 682–83; and
"Miracles," 558.
82 Nicol, The Semeia of the Fourth Gospel, 83-86. To a lesser degree
a similar case
could be made for an Elijah and Messiah typology in
the intertestamental period,
though the Elijah figure was usually seen as the
forerunner of the Messiah, not the
Messiah Himself. See Joachim Jeremias, " ‘Hl(e)i<aj,"
in Theological Dictionary of
the New Testament, 2 (1964): 931.
300
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / July–September
1996
their actions.83
In the intertestamental
literature a miracle-working Mes-
siah is not explicitly
affirmed, but He is also never explicitly de-
nied. However, there does
seem to be evidence of a general expec-
tation that the Messiah's age
would be miraculous, that those mir-
acles would be effected
through the prophetic Spirit, and that the
Messiah
would be anointed with that same Holy Spirit. So, though
the Messiah is not spoken of in the intertestamental literature as
performing miracles, the lacunae could be accounted
for on other
grounds, and there is nothing inherently
incompatible with a
miracle-working Messiah in the
pre-Christian hopes of Ju-
daism.84
NEW
TESTAMENT WITNESSES
As already noted, Jesus' messianic
identity was revealed by
His miracles. Though Old Testament
prophets did not need to
perform miracles, miracles could serve to attest
the authenticity
of their message. The New Testament makes a
concerted effort to
affirm Jesus' prophetic office by miracles. For
example accord-
ing to Philo's contention
that the forecast of a prophet's own death
was the prophet's greatest proof,85
Jesus predicted His own death
on numerous occasions (e.g., Mark 8:31; 10:32-34).
Also there is
little doubt the crowds considered Jesus a prophet
because of His
miracles (Mark 6:14–16; Luke 7:14–17; John 6:14).
Jesus at-
tributed His own inability to
heal in His hometown to the fact that
"a prophet is not without honor except in his home town and
among his own relatives and in his own
household" (Mark 6:4).
Luke especially seems to have
portrayed Jesus as a prophet,
but most notably as a prophet like Moses.86
Similar to the in-
tertestmental Moses typology, which
said the Messiah would be a
83 The Antiquities of the
Jews 20.97, 167–69. The parallel to Moses is seen in their
drawing their followers into the wilderness,
and, to a lesser degree their perfor-
mance of miracles like Moses
(Jeremias, "Mwush?j," 4:861-62).
84 Rudolf Bultmann makes a similar conclusion (The Gospel of John, trans. G. R.
Beasley-Murray,
R. W. N. Hoare, and J. K. Riches [
1971], 306, n. 3).
85 Kolenkow,
"Relationship between Miracle and Prophecy," 1494–95, citing Philo,
Moses
2:290.
86 Turner says Luke's
concern to portray Jesus as the Mosaic Prophet and the
church as the true disciples of Moses "is a
concern which is central to Luke's
whole purpose in writing" ("The Spirit and
the Power of Jesus' Miracles," 146, n.
59).
He cites agreement from R. Maddox, The
Purpose of Luke Acts (
Clark,
1982); D. L. Tiede, Prophecy and History in Luke Acts (
Fortress,
1980); D. Juel, Luke-Acts
(London: SCM, 1983); and R. L. Brawley, Luke–
Acts and the Jews:
Conflict, Apology and Conciliation (Atlanta: Scholars, 1987).
Cf. Barnett, "Jewish Sign Prophets,"
691, and O'Reilly, Sign and Word,
180, n. 68.
Miracles
and Jesus' Proclamation of the
redeeming prophet, the disciples on the
their hope in Jesus, whom they considered a prophet
and
Redeemer (Luke 24:19-21). Several commentators
have observed
the connection between the crowd's adulation of
Jesus as a prophet
for raising the dead (Luke 7:14-16) and the prompt
question from
John
about Jesus' possible messianic connections (vv. 19-22).87
Twice
in Acts 1-12 Jesus is considered "the prophet" like Moses
(Acts
3:22-23; 7:37). Stephen's sermon in particular seems to
draw parallels between Jesus and Moses in their
rejection
(Moses:
7:25, 35, 39; Jesus: 7:51) and their function as redeemers
(v.
35) and workers of signs and wonders (v. 36).88
Jesus' miracles also resembled those
of the prophets Elijah
and Elisha.89 At the beginning of His
ministry Jesus indicated
that their deeds are parallel to His own ministry as
the anointed
Herald of the gospel (Luke 4:16-27). The quotation of Isaiah
61:1-
2
in Luke 4:18-19 grounds His ministry in the Old Testament
prophetic hope, but Jesus understood the following
statements
about the miracles of the two Old Testament prophets
as a prefig-
urement of His own rejection
and ultimate ministry outside of Is-
rael (4:24-27).90
So, in keeping with the healing of Naaman, the
Aramean (2 Kings 5), Jesus healed the Samaritan
leper (Luke
17:11-19)
and cast out the demon from the Syrophoenician
woman's daughter (Mark 7:24-30).91
Like Elijah and Elisha, Je-
87
For
example O'Reilly, Sign and Word, 180,
n. 68; and I. Howard Marshall, Luke:
Historian and Theologian (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 1970), 126–27.
88 "Quite clearly,
Stephen and the community which he represented believed and
affirmed that Jesus was a Mosaic figure"
(Barnett, "Jewish Sign Prophets," 691). On
the parallel to Moses as a miracle-worker, Gerhardsson is probably correct in see-
ing Jesus' miracles
parallel to Moses' deeds during the wilderness wanderings
rather than the Exodus event in
Matthew, 17). Barnett suggests that
the difference between the Greek texts of Acts
3:22
and 7:37 and the Septuagint of Deuteronomy 18:15 means "there was a firm tra-
dition among the first
Christians which held that Jesus was ‘the Prophet’," not just
any prophet for whom Moses could be the pattern
("Jewish Sign Prophets," 691).
89 Betz and Grimm, Wesen and Wirklichkeit,
31–42; Raymond E. Brown, "Jesus
and Elisha," Perspective 12 (1971): 85–104; and
Thomas Louis Brodie, "Jesus as the
New
Elisha: Cracking the Code," Expository Times 93 (1981–1982): 39-42.
90 Another equally broad
parallel between Jesus and Elisha has been observed
by
Roth,
who notes that Elisha's miracles ultimately climaxed
in the renewal of the
rule of Yahweh in
have the same function on a much grander scale (Wolfgang
M. W. Roth, "The Secret
of the Kingdom," Christian Century, March 2, 1983, 182).
91 Brodie
has made the case that John consciously reported the healing of the
blind man in John 9 in order to parallel Elisha's healing of Naaman. Brodie sees
common elements in the subjects of the healing (both
were instruments of a greater
message), the cure (the command to wash), the
double reaction (Gehazi versus
Naaman; the Pharisees versus the blind man), and the
confrontation (transferral of
302
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / July–September
1996
sus has significant power
to raise the dead (1 Kings 17:17-24; 2
Kings
4:18-37; Mark 5:21-23, 35-43; Luke 7:11-17) and cleanse
lepers (2 Kings 5; Mark 1:40-45; Luke 17:11-19).
Demons at-
tempted to ward Jesus off with the same words
tie widow used of
Elisha in 1 Kings 17:18 ("What do we have to do
with you?" Mark
1:24;
5:7). And Jesus' disciples failed to exorcize demons (Mark
9:18-28)
the way Gehazi failed to heal (2 Kings 4:31-33).
MIRACLES AND THE TIMING OF THE KINGDOM
The works of Weiss and Schweitzer92
also touched off debate
about the timing of the kingdom, and the miracles of
Jesus were
discussed in this larger context. In the so-called
"consistent es-
chatology" of Schweitzer,
Jesus' miracles were viewed as signs
that the kingdom was about to break forth and the
end of the age
was imminent. Schweitzer said Jesus believed the
miracles were
pointers to a soon-coming cataclysmic finale. In
answer to this
view Dodd articulated a so-called "realized
eschatology,"93 argu-
ing from the parables and
Matthew 12:28 that the miracles showed
the full presence of the kingdom in Jesus'
ministry. It was not
imminent, he said, because it had already
arrived. Most scholars
place themselves somewhere in the middle, claiming
features of
both an apocalyptic and a partially realized
kingdom.94
Subsequent discussions of this
kingdom that is "already" but
still "not yet" have not succeeded entirely
in clearing the fog
where miracles are concerned. In some cases miracles
still are
only heralds of the ultimate end of the world. For
example
Jeremias refers to Jesus' exorcisms as
"foretastes," and "an-
ticipations" of the
eschatological hour when Satan will be visibly
robbed of his power.95 Similarly Fuller
calls them "foreshad-
ows,"96 and Harvey understands them
as proleptic transforma-
tions in light of an imminent
future.97 On the other hand a sig-
leprosy to Gehazi and
blindness to the Pharisees) (Brodie, "Jesus as
the New
Elisha,"
40).
92 Johannes Weiss, Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche
Gottes (
&
Ruprecht, 1892); and Albert Schweitzer, Von Reimarus zu Wrede (
Mohr, 1906).
93 C. H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom, 3d ed. (New
York: Scribner, 1936).
94 See the discussion and
bibliography in George E. Ladd, The Presence of the
Fu-
ture (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 138–45, and G. R.
Beasley-Murray, Jesus and
the
95 Jeremias, New Testament Theology, 95.
96
R. H.
Fuller, Interpreting the Miracles (
97
Miracles
and Jesus' Proclamation of the
nificant number of scholars are
saying that such language does
not go far enough. They say Jesus' miracles were
not
preparations, illustrations, signs,
or indicators of the kingdom;
they were the kingdom itself. Brown echoes this
thinking when
he says the miracles were "one of the means
by which the King-
dom came."98
Van der Loos also
concludes, "We do not regard
miracles primarily as signs, seals, additions,
attendant phe-
nomena or however they are
described, but see them as a function
sui generis of the
While there is obvious merit to the
middle way being forged
in regard to the kingdom's timing, the miracles
suggest that
overly broad statements about the kingdom's presence
in Jesus'
ministry should be avoided. First, care must be
exercised so that
the operation of the kingdom in the miracles does
not obliterate
their stated function as signs (John 20:30-31). A
sign, understood
through the tradition of the Old Testament,
points to something
else. It either authenticates or predicts a coming
event (e.g.,
Exod. 4:8-9; Isa. 7:14),
but it is not to be identified with that
event.100 In the Gospels the
miracles of Jesus and His disciples
follow this pattern in relation to the kingdom by
their provisional
nature. Jesus' miracles did not bring about the final
rest and
restoration of the kingdom promised in the Old
Testament. Those
who were healed would again fall sick and die; the
demons would
escape complete subjugation until their
"hour," and the creation
would continue to suffer under the cosmic oppression
of the evil
one—all indications that the kingdom was not yet
established.101
98 Brown, "The Gospel Miracles," 187.
99
Van der Loos, The Miracles of Jesus, 250-51. Others in agreement with Brown
and Van der Loos include Beasley-Murray, Jesus and the Kingdom of God, 80–83;
Betz
and Grimm, Wesen and Wirklichkeit,
30; Davey, "Healing in the New Testa-
ment," 55; Rudolf Schnackenburg, God's
Rule and Kingdom (
and Herder, 1963), 127; and Oepke,
"i]a<omai,"
3:213.
100 Richardson, Miracle-Stories of the Gospels, 57; and
Colin Brown, Miracles
and the Critical Mind, 322-23.
101 The incomplete nature
of Satan's subjugation showed to the ancient world that
Jesus
did not establish the kingdom in His miracles. One of the dominant features
of the oriental monarch in ancient
of the army. As guarantor of the nation's domestic
and national security, the king
led the army against all who would threaten the
country's borders. The submission
of his enemies would naturally entail their
forcible disarmament and the annihila-
tion of their threat to his
governance. See Gerhard Delling, "u[opita<ssw,"
in Theolog-
ical Dictionary of the New Testament, 8 (1972): 42; Ludwig
Schmidt, "Konigtum," in
Theologische Realenzyklopadie, 19:328; and H. Lesetre, "Roi," in Dictionnaire de la
Bible, ed. F. Vigouroux (Paris: Letouzey & Ane, 1912), col. 1122. Per Beskow
summa-
rizes the functions normally
associated with the concept of "king" as exalted judge,
ruler, and conqueror (Rex Gloriae: The Kingship of Christ in the
trans. Eric J. Sharpe [
304 BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / July–September 1996
So
in one sense there is a disjunction between what Jesus' mira-
cles were and what they
pointed to. As Ridderbos wrote, miracles
indicate
the coming of the kingdom and point to the cosmic palin-
genesis. .
. . But they are not the beginning of this palingenesis,
as if the
latter were the completion of the miracles. For this
palingenesis is something of the future world aeon; because it
embodies
the resurrection of the dead and the renewal of the
world, it
does not belong to the present dispensation. It even pre-
supposes
the precedence of the cosmic catastrophe.102
Second, the Holy Spirit's role in
Jesus' miracles indicates
that the eschatological kingdom was present in some
way.103 The
long-awaited outpouring of God's
Spirit was being fulfilled.
However,
in view of the Spirit's role in creation and the giving of
life, His role in connection with the kingdom may
best be viewed
in terms of His power or animating principle. Thus
in light of
Hebrews
6:5, the kingdom's presence in Jesus' miracles was the
presence of the power of the eschatological
kingdom, and not
technically the presence of the kingdom itself.
Jesus' miracles
are then seen as signs of the kingdom, because in
His ministry
each partial victory over chaos was a foretaste of
the final king-
dom to come.
MIRACLES AND THE OFFER OF THE KINGDOM
Closely associated with the
kingdom's timing is the element
of human decision. For the Gospel writers, Jesus'
acts and words
were intended to provoke a decision in those to whom
the revela-
tions were made. He did not
come simply working wonders and
teaching with new authority; He came demanding
response.
"Repent
and believe" (Mark 1:15) was the gospel proclamation
from the beginning. To this demand for repentance,
miracles
gave a sense of urgency.104 They were the
awe-inspiring object
lessons about which no one could be apathetic.
In other words by
their wondrous and signatory qualities they forced
the issue:
Was
this message really what the messenger claimed or not?
Miracles
necessarily created a division in Jesus audience ac-
cording to whether they believed or refused to
believe.
102 Ridderbos,
The Coming of the Kingdom, 119-20.
103 The Spirit's unique
presence in Jesus helps one avoid making the meaning of
e@fqasen in Matthew 12:28 bear
too heavy a burden for the kingdom's establishment
in Jesus. Sanders's
caution to this effect is well taken (Jesus and Judaism, 134).
104 Johannes Rehm notes that as miracles were observable demonstrations
of the
kingdom's presence, they gave an urgency to Jesus'
ministry ("metanoe<w," in Theo-
logical Dictionary of the New Testament, 4 [1967]: 1001).
Miracles
and Jesus' Proclamation of the
Such a division is clearly indicated
in the Gospel of
Matthew.105
The combination of Jesus' words and miracles in
chapters 11-12 elicits such rejection of His
message by His own
family and the people and leaders of
change His message for them. Beginning in chapter 13
Jesus
shrouded His teaching about the kingdom in
enigmatic parables,
and, as Baird has demonstrated, the parables of the
kingdom
function in different ways depending on whether
Jesus was
teaching those in belief or those in unbelief.106
Beginning in
Matthew
13 Jesus always made sure His parables of the kingdom
were understood by those who believed in Him (i.e.,
the disciples),
and He never explained His parables to those who
were rejecting
Him.107
Furthermore the nature of the kingdom revealed in the
parables is different from the nature of the
kingdom sought in the
prophetic hope. Ladd has observed this difference
in content for
the parables: "That there should be a coming
of God's Kingdom in
the way Jesus proclaimed, in a hidden, secret form,
working
quietly among men, was utterly novel to Jesus'
contemporaries.
The
Old Testament gave no such promise."108
If Jesus' teaching of the kingdom is
directly related to the re-
sponse He received, what about
His miracles? Since they are in-
herently tied to His message, do
they follow the same pattern as
the parables in hiding the kingdom and pronouncing
judgment
on those who reject Him?
On the question of concealment,
miracles do not necessarily
follow the track of the kingdom parables, but they are
not incom-
patible with it either.
Miracles are by nature silent witnesses that
need the word for understanding. With no specific
word they are
105 Cf. Mark R. Saucy,
"The Kingdom-of-God Sayings in Matthew," Bibliotheca
Sacra 151 (April–June 1994):
175–97.
106
J.
Arthur Baird, "A Pragmatic Approach to Parable Exegesis: Some New Evi-
dence on Mark 4:11,
33–34," Journal of Biblical
Literature 76 (1957): 201–7. Cf.
Raymond
E. Brown, The Semitic Background of the Term
"Mystery" in the New
Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress,
1968), 35, n. 110.
107 Matthew 13:34 seems to
indicate that Jesus told more "kingdom" parables to
the crowds, but they remained unexplained and enigmatic
for the most part. After
chapter 12 the crowds (including the leaders)
understood only three parables about
the
dom was taken from them.
Thus no positive information about the
is revealed in parabolic form to those in
rejection, though the disciples were privy
to every kingdom parable. Kingdom (basilei<a)-language follows the
same pattern.
Jesus'
only public statement about the kingdom to the crowds (in addition to the
parables above) is in 23:13, which again was
directed to the leaders and was nega-
tive: "But woe to you,
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the
kingdom of heaven from men; for you do not enter
in yourselves, nor do you allow
those who are entering to go in."
108 Ladd, The Presence of the Future, 225.
306
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / July—September
1996
more open to diverse and perverse interpretations.
After an indi-
vidual made a decision about
Christ, a new dimension of the
message was added only for those insiders (i.e.,
the information
in the kingdom parables). However, in accord with
this new di-
mension that Jesus was
revealing by word, miracles have only
limited participation. To insiders, miracles
confirm that His
message is what He says it is, but they do not
specifically affirm
the details of the new message. As always, they
point to the mes-
sage, whatever it may be, and the messenger. Thus in
contrast to
Jesus'
verbal proclamation, which did vary according to the spiri-
tual receptivity of the
audience, few changes occurred in Jesus'
miracles. He still publicly healed and cast out
demons in
(e.g., Matt. 17:14–18; Luke 17:11–19). He fed the multitudes
(Matt.
14:13–21) and walked on the sea (Mark 6:45-52). Miracles
continued to reassure the faithful and to harden
the opponents.109
While Jesus did give information
about the kingdom to the
crowds after Matthew 13, He never gave positive
information to
anyone other than the spiritually receptive. They
alone were
given to understand the "mysteries" of the
kingdom in the
"kingdom parables." On the negative side Jesus also had
a mes-
sage about the kingdom for those who rejected Him.
Sometimes
He
needed to explain it (Matt. 21:27–32) and sometimes He did
not need to do so (21:33–45), but always the message
was one of
judgment. The spiritually hardened who have
rejected the king-
dom will not be allowed to
enter it (21:31); the kingdom is taken
away from them (21:43) and they face the wrath of God
(22:7). In
both Matthew (21:18–22) and Mark (11:12–14, 20–25)
this negative
message is authenticated with the miraculous
withering of the fig
tree. Following the parable of the same subject in
Luke 13:6–9 and
the rich tradition of Old Testament and intertestamental texts on
fig trees, the plight of the tree foreshadows the
eschatological
judgment on the nation in its spiritually blind
and deaf condi-
tion.110 Coming after the
people's rejection of Jesus (Matt. 12;
Mark
3), this miracle of the fig tree clearly illustrates their rejec-
tion of Him and His message.
CONCLUSION
Jesus' many miracles were
significant revelations of the
kingdom of God that Jesus preached. They
revealed the king-
109 Compare the reaction by
Jesus' enemies exemplified in the resurrection of
Lazarus (John 12:10-11).
110 See Blomberg,
"The Miracles as Parables," 330-33; and Delling,
"Der Verstand-
of Satan, not
Miracles
and Jesus' Proclamation of the
dom's eschatological and soteriological nature according to
promises in the Old Testament about the
Spirit-anointed New
Age. Miracles demonstrated that the kingdom Jesus
announced
would be Yahweh's promised Sabbath rest, the end of
Satan's
chaotic exploitation of the creation, the final
actualization of di-
vine mercy, and the perfect realization of purity
from the heart.
They
also revealed the kingdom's inherent physicality. They
showed that the Old Testament promises regarding the
creation,
human societies, and individuals called for physical
and thus
literal fulfillment in this kingdom. The
spiritual entity only.
A secondary function of miracles was
to reveal the identity of
Jesus as Miracle-worker. By the testimony of His
miracles Jesus
could legitimately lay claim to a messianic role as
presented in
canonical and noncanonical
witnesses. His miracles also show
the kingdom's interface with human decision about
His min-
istry. Jesus' miracles
indicate the presence of kingdom power,
and yet they are not the presence of the kingdom
because they are
not the kingdom itself in its fullness; of this
reality they are only
signs. Also miracles show why the eschatological
kingdom was
not established in Jesus' First Advent. They
provide a unique an-
gle from which to observe
Jesus' initial offer of the Old Testament
prophetic hope, its rejection by all quadrants of
its subsequent change and delay.
This
material is cited with gracious permission from: x
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